Only the cheapest of Craigellachie's three single malts is priced below its flavour-crowd. Climb the range and that gap to the crowd widens at every rung.
The instinct with a distillery's line-up is that the dear bottles are the serious ones and the entry bottle is the one you settle for. Measure each Craigellachie against its crowd, the ten whiskies the model rates nearest it on flavour, and that reading only holds if you want it to. The 13-year-old comes in a touch under its crowd. The 19 sits a little over. The 23 asks more than double what its nearest flavour-matches ask. The brand's middle price this week is $376, a figure pulled up by two luxury bottles rather than one that describes the range.
A word on the distillery first, because it shapes what you are tasting. Craigellachie sits in the heart of Speyside and has long traded on an old-fashioned, heavier style of make. What reaches the glass in these three, though, leans brighter than that reputation suggests: a run of orchard and tropical fruit, citrus peel, a waxy richness underneath. Keep that thread in mind as the prices rise, because the extra money buys age and weight layered onto the same character, not a different whisky each time.
Rum casks leave their mark. The Balvenie 14 Caribbean Cask, $151 at Dan Murphy's, opens banoffee-sweet with vanilla, toffee and banana, then turns soft and silky with pineapple, papaya and mango. More on it in this week's piece. Which fruit do you catch first?
Had them both open this week. Love The Balvenie 14 Caribbean Cask? Glenfiddich 14 Bourbon Reserve gives you about 95% of it for 75% of the price, $113 for members. Oak, heather, a little vanilla. Which one's on your bench tonight? More in this week's piece on the Balvenie.
Pour The Balvenie 14 Caribbean Cask: soft and silky, vanilla and toffee sliding into pineapple and mango from the rum casks. A Glenfiddich Gran Reserva 21 drinker would put 67% of their own bottle's price on it, a younger whisky than theirs. More in this week's piece.
The Balvenie 14 Caribbean Cask is $6.36 a standard drink, about 24 to the bottle. That's 242nd of 310 at Dan Murphy's per standard drink. A pint at the pub is about $6.28 a drink. A pour at home lands just over. More on The Balvenie 14 Caribbean Cask in this week's piece.
The Balvenie 14 Caribbean Cask is $151 at Dan Murphy's this week, a little under the $161 it usually sells around, so if those sweet-and-tropical notes are where you want to be the price sits in easy reach right now. More on it in this week's piece.
Here's the surprise: Craigellachie 13, at $111, gives a The Balvenie 14 Caribbean Cask drinker about 93% of what that bottle does, for 74% of its price. Grilled pineapple, caramel, a twist of grapefruit. Tempting before you reach for the Balvenie? More in this week's piece.
Two Speyside malts to put side by side this week. The Balvenie 14 Caribbean Cask is $151, soft and silky, vanilla and toffee up front before the rum casks bring pineapple, papaya and mango through. Craigellachie 13 is $111, a touch funky under the caramel and grapefruit peel, with candied pineapple coming through. At Dan Murphy's the pair come to $262 this week; they usually sell around $272, and the same two are $270 at Liquorland. If you're after both, that's your week to grab them, $262 for the pair.
A mate pours you a finger of something golden at the end of a long week, no label in sight, and asks you to guess. It is soft, sweet, faintly tropical. You land on The Balvenie 14 Caribbean Cask, and you are right. Then he tells you what he actually poured, and it changes how you shop.
Craigellachie sells three single malts here, and the value runs out after the first one. Only the cheapest is tagged below the company it keeps, and the climb to the next rung up is not a step. It is a staircase.
Spend $800 on the oldest Craigellachie and what you are buying is age. Spend $111 on the youngest and what you are buying is the distillery itself. This week the shelf lays that choice out as plainly as it ever will.
Craigellachie makes a deliberately old-fashioned malt: meaty, faintly sulphured, with a thread of tinned tropical fruit that most of Speyside sanded away decades ago. Three of its bottles sit on the shelf this week, and only the cheapest one is priced below what its rivals ask.
| bottle | region | latest ticket | read | window price | CE 360° mean | premium | shelf rank | per std drink | drink rank | content |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Craigellachie 19YO Single Malt Whisky | Speyside | $375.99 | observed | $375.99 | $335.09 | 10.9% | #52 of 79 | $14.80 | #64 of 75 | 0 |
| Craigellachie 23 Year Old Single Malt Scotch Whisky | Speyside | $799.99 | observed | $799.99 | $676.30 | 15.5% | #67 of 79 | $31.49 | #75 of 75 | 0 |
| Craigellachie CRAIGELLACHIE® 13 YO Single Malt Scotch Whisky | Speyside | $110.99 | observed | $110.99 | $101.34 | 8.7% | #45 of 79 | $4.37 | #35 of 75 | 8 |